by Dyan Sheldon
“Tiles!” she shouts as someone else might shout Gold! “Linoleum tiles! Isn’t this fantabulous? And they’re all different colours and patterns. I can make the buildings and streets mosaics. It’ll be incredible.”
“I thought you were making a model of Parsons Falls not Philly or Barcelona.”
“It’s an art project. Remember? In art you’re supposed to use your imagination.”
He is using his imagination. He’s imagining himself heaving the tiles out of the dumpster and breaking his neck. “Aren’t those boxes kind of heavy?”
“Yes, Joshua, they are kind of heavy.” The loops and twists and balls on her hat all bounce with vexation. “That’s why I need your help. I’ll hand it up to you. You grab the end and balance it on the rim. Then I’ll climb over and you can pass it down to me. We should be able to manage it together.”
Josh looks at the box. Warily. Balefully. What if it’s even heavier than it looks? What if it slips out of his control?
“What if you do it sometime this morning?” prompts Ramona.
He grabs the end. The box is even heavier than it looks. And treacherously unwieldy. To add to his difficulties, gravity is against him. As is the garbage can beneath his feet. Although this is something he’s never actually done, he feels as if he’s trying to guide the Eiffel Tower over a wall while standing in a rowboat on a choppy sea.
“It might be faster if you used two hands,” suggests Ramona.
It might also be the end of his precious young life.
“It’d be even faster if I used four,” snaps Josh.
He is concentrating so hard on trying to steady the box and not topple over that it isn’t until he hears his name being called from somewhere other than the dumpster that he realizes someone else has come into the car park.
“Josh? Josh, is that you?”
He knows that voice. Of all the parking lots in all the world, she has to come to this one. Now. Not a half-hour from now; not tomorrow. Right at this very moment in time. Shutdown. He stops breathing; every cell in his body locks. What could he possibly have done to make Fate hate him so much?
“What are you doing?” shouts Ramona from inside the bin. “Why did you stop? I can’t hold it like this.” Gravity is against her, as well.
Instead of answering Ramona, he looks behind him.
“Oh my God, Josh! It is you!”
And, as if twisted Fate has outdone itself to bring them together at this time and in this place, it is, of course, Jenevieve Capistrano standing behind him. This time he’s pretty sure that she’s laughing at him, not with him. Next to Jenevieve Capistrano, holding her hand, is Simon Copeland. Of course. Who else would it be? Simon is definitely laughing at him.
“Josh!” There is an unusual note of panic in Ramona’s voice, but Josh doesn’t hear it. “Josh! I can’t hold it!” But all Josh hears is Jena asking him what he’s doing hauling garbage out of the container.
The next thing he hears is the box hitting the ground. To prove that even when everything’s going wrong miracles can happen, he manages not to fall on top of it.
It is Simon who helps him up.
“Wow, I never thought we’d run into you like this,” laughs Jena. “Talk about weird!”
Does she mean him, or just that they’re in the car park behind the hardware store on a Saturday morning?
“So you’re Josh,” says Simon. “I didn’t expect to see you climbing into a dumpster. I thought your speciality was trees.” He is not only outrageously good-looking; he has an easy confidence that is almost palpable – and that makes him doubly attractive. Even Josh can see that. Much as he’d prefer not to. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Polite. Friendly. Even to someone who just fell off a garbage can.
“Really? I haven’t heard anything about you.”
Simon looks as if something cold just slapped him in the face, but Jena laughs. “He’s joking,” she says. “Didn’t I say he’s really funny?”
“Oh, he’s hysterical!” Suddenly Ramona vaults out of the dumpster, landing neatly on the ground beside them. The poster girl for the benefits of Ashtanga yoga. “I haven’t stopped laughing all morning. It may kill me.” She gives Josh a look as pointed as a needle. “Especially when he let the box go.”
Josh isn’t sure whether the stunned silence following Ramona’s arrival is because it is so sudden and dramatic, or because, as tall as Simon, she seems to tower over all three of them in her bizarre hat, wearing a too-large man’s tweed overcoat, striped leggings and motorcycle boots. He isn’t sure what she looks like, but there’s a good possibility that it’s nothing from the planet Earth. Even Josh, with his ponytail and wearing his gathering-garbage clothes (his oldest jeans, the sneakers Charley Patton uses as scratching mats and a jacket that was in the way of a toppled can of red paint) looks normal in comparison; Jena and Simon look positively dressed up.
Jena breaks the silence “You two met the other day?” she says, making it a question. “At the drama club meeting? Ramona Minamoto. Simon Copeland. Ramona’s our costume designer.”
Simon, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Ramona since she catapulted into their midst, says, “Costume designer.” He nods, considering the implications of this information. “Is that why you were in the dumpster?”
“No. My trusty companion and I were looking for stuff for my art project. What about you two? Hot date in the car park before the stores open?”
Once again, only Jena laughs. “We’re meeting some of Si’s friends for breakfast.”
Simon had let go of Jena to help up Josh, but now he takes her hand again. “And we better get a move on, baby. You know I don’t like to be late.”
As they walk away, Ramona says, “Speak of the linebacker and he shall appear.” She looks over at Josh. “So now you met him.”
“Yeah, now I met him.” And Simon met Josh. “He seems okay.”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ve changed my mind.” She makes a that-doesn’t-taste-right face. “Baby! I hate guys who call girls ‘baby’. It’s diminishing. It’s better than ho, but not a lot.”
Josh isn’t listening. He watches Simon and his baby – talking and butting against each other like playful horses – disappear out of sight. Be glad for her, he admonishes himself. Look how happy she is! But all he can think is: it should have been me.
Hope Is ILL
People live on the frozen tundra. People survive penal colonies, years of solitary imprisonment and concentration camps. People live through wars, disease, famine and personal tragedies that could make the mountains cry. When you think about it like that, what’s Simon Copeland compared to the Black Death, slavery, the Trail of Tears, concentration camps or Stalin’s Gulag camps? Not even a minor irritation, really. He’s just a good-looking boy who can tackle. Some day he’ll be a lot less good-looking and he’ll be lucky if he can walk, never mind tackle, because of old football injuries. Who’ll be laughing then? With these thoughts firm in his mind, Josh gets used to the idea that Jena has a boyfriend. More or less.
Hope is an odd thing. Looked at logically, hope is no more than a wish that things turn out well or get better. Whatever we do – get in cars, climb mountains, walk down the street, eat junk food, sail across the Atlantic in a kayak, play roulette – we do because we trust that everything will be all right; hope so. That the car won’t crash, that we won’t fall off the mountain, that we won’t be struck by lightning, that we won’t destroy our body, that we won’t be lost at sea – that we’ll win. If we knew for certain that we’d die in an auto accident, disappear into an abyss, have a heart attack in the parking lot where we stopped for ice cream, drown, or lose every cent we had, we wouldn’t do any of those things. Indeed, if we didn’t live in hope more than in reality, few of us would bother getting up in the morning. What’s the point? We’re all doomed.
Josh may have accepted the fact of Simon, but he was still holding on to the hope that he could sit Simon out. Okay, he told himself, Simon m
ade it through the first-date test, and on into the second and third dates and official boyfriend status, but how long could it be before some fatal flaw surfaced? Eventually, Simon would blow over like a storm cloud and the sun would shine on Josh once more. But then he met Simon, and Hope became ill and began to fade fast. Even Josh could see that Simon is pretty terrific (if you like that kind of thing). Pleasant. Friendly. Personable. Simon likes who he is, so everybody else likes him too. If he knows insecurity it’s as something that happens to others. Simon is the teenager adults love – popular, talented, a genuine all-rounder. The kid they want their children to be. No problems here. No dark depths or unpleasant surprises. No doubts about his future, either. They can imagine the man he’ll grow into and they like him, too. Simon is the anti-weird; the boy you can rely on to do what you think he should. No wonder the General loves him. No wonder Jena thinks the centre of our solar system has shifted from the sun to the star linebacker of Smittstown High. Every new thing Josh hears about Simon adds a new symptom to Hope’s malady. Headache. Fever. Difficulty breathing. Arrhythmia. Dizzy spells. Nausea.
Mercifully, Simon could only be busier if he never slept. Besides school and all his extracurricular activities, he coaches an elementary school team and works part-time for his father’s landscaping firm. Jena usually sees him only on weekends. “Thank God we live in the twenty-first century,” says Jena. “At least we can pretty much be together even if we’re apart.” They spend hours together every night – he in his house and she in hers. You have to hope they have good cell-phone plans. “I mean, really, can you imagine if we didn’t have Instagram? I’d probably forget what he looks like!”
What a shame that would be.
Josh is philosophical about his own lack of opportunities to see Simon again. As far as Josh is concerned, meeting Simon is one of those things, like nearly drowning, that you only have to do once to know you don’t really want to do it again. But Fate, of course, has other ideas. Josh has done his best to forget what Simon looks like and almost succeeded when – like a gift from a bad fairy determined to ruin your holidays – he sees him again.
It’s only days before Christmas. Every weekend in December, Josh has been busking by the war memorial at the foot of town, where the buses to the mall stop. Ramona, working in the gallery, makes him eat his lunch in the office with her and brings him cups of herbal tea through the day so he doesn’t perish from the cold. Sometimes Sal, who has a seasonal job at the gourmet deli, joins them.
One Saturday Ramona turned up in a red cape with a silver ribbon wound through her hair and her violin under her arm. “People want to hear carols and ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’,” said Ramona. “Not ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’.” He made more money in an hour than he was making in a day, and the crowd that had gathered sang along to “O Holy Night”. “I figured if I didn’t help out you’d never get enough to buy all your presents,” said Ramona. Among other things, a necklace for his mother, a new scratch pad for Charley Patton, a cookbook for his uncles and a silver tree charm for Jena. He didn’t mention the charm. “You don’t think maybe you’re stereotyping?” asked Ramona. Because he was getting Charley a scratch pad? “No, dope. Because you’re getting your uncles a cookbook.” Josh pointed out that they like to cook.
On this Saturday, however, Josh is alone – and oddly missing Ramona. Ramona is not only fun to play with but attracts a crowd – possibly because she plays so well, or possibly because of the red cape, or possibly because, with him beside her, it looks as if she’s brought an elf with her for the occasion. He’s playing a spirited version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” when someone throws five dollars into his case. He looks over to see Jenevieve Capistrano smiling at him. Beside her is Simon Copeland; Simon Copeland isn’t smiling. When Josh finishes the song Jena claps so much that even people just passing by join in. Though not Simon, who stands straight and tight – as if he’s desperate to get to the bathroom.
“That was great,” says Jena. “You’re really good.” Which seems to come as a surprise. “I didn’t know you played stuff like that. I thought you only did old songs.”
“That is an old song. You missed ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’. That’s even older.”
She laughs. “You know what I mean. Folk music.”
“Blues mainly,” says Josh. “But I try not to be inflexible.”
She puts a hand on Simon’s arm. “You remember Simon.”
“How could I forget?”
“And I remember Josh,” says Simon. Making it clear why he remembers him – because he was dumpster diving and fell off a garbage can – without actually saying so. He nods at the open guitar case. “I’m surprised they let you busk down here. Isn’t there a town ordinance?” Making it clear that he thinks busking is one very small step away from begging and not necessarily in the right direction – but without actually saying that either.
“It’s Christmas,” says Josh. “Peace and goodwill to all men, right?” Though, on second thoughts, perhaps not every last man.
Simon smiles. “Right.”
“We’re on our way to the Moon and Sixpence,” says Jena. “Simon’s looking for something for his mom.”
Simon nods. “My mom loves Americana.”
“Well, that’s the place to go,” says Josh. “If Betsy Ross were alive she’d be selling her flags there.”
“Tilda’s having her party tonight,” offers Jena. “I figure I can get her a little something there, too. Maybe earrings.”
“Good idea,” says Josh. “I did notice she definitely has ears.”
He will probably never make Simon laugh.
They stand there smiling at each other for a few seconds, awkward as cats on stilts. Around them the town bustles – talk and laughter, traffic and hurrying feet – but they’ve become the Bermuda Triangle of Parsons Falls, still smiling but silent.
Simon adjusts his arm around Jena. “You play something, don’t you? I mean besides the guitar. What is it again?”
“The mandolin,” says Josh. “Mandolin and guitar. And a little harmonica.”
Simon’s smile does nothing to warm the afternoon. He shakes his head. “No, I meant, what game?”
“Chess.”
“Oh, right,” says Simon. And finally laughs. “I knew it couldn’t be basketball.”
Hope Dies
Jena and Simon aren’t the only ones with a festive gathering to go to tonight. Which is a good thing. If he had nothing particular to do, Josh would undoubtedly spend the night imagining Jena and Simon making out in some dim corner of the party. In its dark, airless and lonely room, Hope develops a bad cough. But, because Sal and Carver will be out of town until New Year’s, Sal has invited everyone around to his house for a pre-Christmas hang-out (the Pod Squad + two, as Josh thinks of them now that Ramona and Zara have become part of the group). “Pretzels shaped like Christmas trees and biscuits shaped like stars,” promised Sal. “Plus the black-and-white, uncolourized version of It’s a Wonderful Life.” Eat your heart out, Tilda Kopel.
By the time he gets home his mother has already gone out for the evening. Josh makes himself some supper, and he and Charley Patton share it while they listen to Bob Dylan’s Christmas album. When they’re done eating, Josh takes a shower and starts to get ready to go out himself.
Josh is drying his hair when the doorbell rings. Charley Patton sits up, eyes wide and ears pointing due north, in watch-cat mode. Carver said he’d walk over to Sal’s with him. Josh checks the time; Carver’s early. He must really like pretzels shaped like Christmas trees. The bell rings again. Urgently. “Hold on, I’m coming,” he calls, drops the towel and lopes to the door.
At first he thinks it must be raining because her face is so wet.
“Jena!” He peers behind her, but the night is cold and clear. “What’s wrong? What are you doing here?” He gives another peer into the night. “Where’s Simon?”
“Oh, Josh!” Sobbing, she flings herself into his arms. “I’m
sorry. You’re probably busy, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Are you all right? What the hell happened?” Holding her, he moves backwards, pulling her into the house with him. It’s almost as if they’re dancing – something he’s tried to imagine, except, of course, that she’s never in tears. He steers her towards the sofa. “Come over here and sit down.”
Several worst-case scenarios gallop through his mind in the seconds between her throwing herself at him and him getting her into the living room – starting with a car crash and ending with date rape.
“I’m okay.” She drops onto the couch, wiping at the tears with the back of her hand, smudging a band of black across her eyes so that she looks like a raccoon. A very pretty raccoon wearing dangling earrings and a sparkly dress, but a raccoon nonetheless. “I just—” Fresh tears start to fall.
He hovers over her heaving shoulders. He doesn’t see any blood or bruises; her clothes aren’t torn. Those have to be good signs. “Tell me what happened. Is it Simon?” The thug. The malevolent creep. “What did he do? Are you sure you’re okay?” If Simon hurt her, Josh will have to get Ramona to beat him up.
“I-It-it was just so horri—” She chokes and snuffles and sobs. Most people look fairly grotesque when they weep uncontrollably, but not Jena. He has the urge to hug her, snot and all.
“Take it easy, Jen.” Josh perches on the arm of the sofa, uselessly patting her shoulder. “There’s no rush.” They have all night.
It doesn’t take quite that long, but it does take a while for her to calm down enough to force the terrible words out of her mouth.
“We-we had a fight. A-a-a really big fight.”
“A fight?” Chrissake, is that all? “A word fight, right? Nobody threw any punches?”
“Of course a word fight,” says Jena. “Simon would never hit me.”
